Lay My Hat

We have used, for example, the following formats: Websites/location: 'Best regards from Tignes, Jack & Jill Crystalatignes or Crystalatignes (delta oscar tango charlie oscar mike) email address: john (delta oscar tango) doe (alpha tango) orange (foxtrot romeo) Phone numbers: spell them fully ou...

we aren't on any payment system with HA yet, hence the reasoning behind the question. So basically what you are saying is that any new renewals (mines due end of Jan 19) will automatically go onto the payment after the guests check in route. Im not happy about anyone either collecting far less hold...

Hello SPJ, Thanks for the tip about the Brittany Ferries website because I am in France (in the Alps). I shall have a look at it. I'm curious as to how your guests find you via HA without booking through HA? My experience over the past five years is that if you try and give guests a phone number, e-...

Hi AngloDutch, Sorry I'm a bit confused with all the acronyms. I can figure out HA (Homeaway) and ABB (AirBnB) but am not familiar with VR or TA and I'm presuming BC is booking.com? And when you say the charge to guests is so outrageous "on that site" are you referring to TA or to BC? Beca...

Rosebud, I worked out that the commission charged from 7 bookings via booking.com would equal the current subscription fee to Homeaway, so basically not cost me any more than renewing my subscription! I'm curious as to where your holiday home is? I have a one-week minimum stay and am also quite expe...

I received an e-mail from Homeaway this morning informing me that when my subscription comes up for renewal at the end of January I will no longer have the option of offering my guests "alternative" methods of payment i.e. cheque, Paypal, bank transfer, but can only use the "pay immed...

Yes, likewise, I think the photo of the red and white structure is very misleading: it looks as though that's the hotel! OK, I'm going to be picky but I'm a professional sub-editor so these things jumped out at me. Putting a capital H on the word hotel is weird and grammatically incorrect. You've al...

I buy feather-filled pillows and when I wash them I put one or more tennis balls in with the wash. These help bang the feathers about and stops them coagulating quite as much. And then once they're dry I just bash the pillows about a bit to spread the feathers out again, and hey presto! Done.

Because they left the flat in such a mess, we decided to drive 650km from our main home just south of Paris to do a thorough inventory and ensure they hadn't broken anything into the bargain. So, that's the return cost of petrol, motorway charges and the fact that we got stuck for 14 hours behind an...

We have found several packets of cigarettes in the bins in our strictly no-smoking flat in the Alps following its occupation last week by five Italians (according to my neighbours they were 40-somethings rather than 20-somethings). It is clearly stated in the contract that this is a no-smoking flat ...

Ikea in France sells very reasonably priced square pillows, together with the pillow protective cases that I always put underneath the pillow case that matches the sheets. The means I can just wash the protective case and only wash the pillows themselves once a season.

I'm on subscription and my property is listed high up on the hundredrooms page for Tignes.

Well, how intriguing! I'd never heard of these sites so out of curiosity after reading this thread, I looked on hundredrooms, and bingo! there was my flat in Tignes (French Alps). I wonder if this is why I've had so many more bookings this winter than I've had in the past?

Yes, thanks I noticed after I'd posted my rant even though I had looked for such threads.

Arbitel is just the French name for Homelidays so it's quite normal that the two should show the same listings. However, what is not normal, in my view, is the e-mail I received a few minutes ago from Homelidays announcing that from 7 June they are going to be charging a 6% fee (6% of the cost of th...